Now, if I, the Pastor, walked up to the podium at the Cathedral and picked up the microphone and said "All authority in heaven and earth is given unto me," you would think, maybe Pastor means he's going to quote, "that into my hands has been delivered this word of God to preach with authority." So you might check that one off, that maybe this is the Pastor emphasizing the authority of the Word that he is reading from.

But if then I went on and said, as though talking to God: "Here I am, Father. I have done all you sent me to do. There are no flaws in me, no imperfections. The law doesn't bother me, I have fulfilled it," and started claiming a perfection like Jesus did, you would start backing up and start looking with sympathy toward Mrs. Scott. And if I further went on to say, "Your eternal destiny is dependent upon putting me in the center of your life and making me your master," by then I would have been interrupted or viewed as "off my rocker." I don't think I would have even gotten to what I didn't include here, that I would have you think that I was a denizen of eternity.

And what if I were to stand up here and say, not in spiritual terms but expecting to be believed? – "Before Abraham was I was. You know, that guy that came out of Ur; I was there. I saw Satan when he was cast out before Adam was ever born."
And then I would talk about heaven with a familiarity with which we talk about our homes. If I tell you the couch in my home is beige, and you say, "How do you know?," I'm going to reply, "Because I live there!" But I'm claiming that kind of familiarity with heaven! You put people in a nut house that talk like that! And then if I would say that I was somehow a ransom for the world, then, someone help my wife lay hands on me before I'm a "goner."
Will you please stop to realize that this proclaimer of impossible things about himself is the only kind of Christ who walked around on the stage of history and is the only one you can find in the sources. You don't find other religious founders doing or saying these things that Jesus said! Buddha never thought he was perfect; he struggled with the essence of tanya, which was their meaning for that corrupt desire that produces sin. He sought the way of the sensual release; he sought the way of the aesthetic yogi, and neither one worked. He came to the eight-fold path that brought him into a trance-like state where he lost conscious identity with this life, called nirvana. And when he came out of that state, he offered those who followed him the eight-fold path, and all he would say is, "It worked for me. Try it; it will work for you."

He never thought all authority was seated in him. Instead, he told his disciples (and it's part of their tri-part basket of scriptures) that he wasn't worthy to lead them. All he left them was the way that worked for him. No assumption of authority seated in him. He never thought he was the center of the religious universe. "The Way" worked, his eight-fold path. Same with all the others.

Mohammed never thought he was perfect. He was God's – Allah's – prophet. He had visions of eternity that impressed the desert man, but he never claimed to have been there. He never died a ransom for anybody. He had a criteria for authority: God revealed it to him in a vision. Jesus never pointed to a vision like the prophet who would say, "The Lord said..." Jesus said, "I say..." Confucius did a logical analysis of society, and he pointed to that external analysis as his authority.

None of the other leaders made themselves the center of the religious universe, seated authority in themselves, had a consciousness of perfection about themselves, claimed an identity with eternity before and after their temporary stay here on earth. None of these traits attached to or are claimed by the other respected founders of a religion. That's why you can respect them as "founders."

With Jesus, you've got what C. S. Lewis called the "startling alternate." Either He thought these things were true, but was too stupid to know it's impossible for a man to make these claims, and thus he could not be wise, or he was wise in knowing these things weren't true, but was capable of duping his followers because of self-serving motives into believing that about him, and that makes him not good. The conclusion is, that those who say he was a "good and wise teacher" reveal they have never really taken the time to encounter the only Christ that ever walked the stage of history.

You must either view Christ as one who considered himself of the order of a poached egg, or you take him for what he says he is, and if He is God, then He is perfect, and authority does rest in Him, and He is the center of the religious universe, and He did have the qualities necessary to die as a ransom for the whole world. He did have a knowledge of eternity, and He will (and did) rise again.

You can't put Jesus in the "good and wise" bland teacher package and forget about Him. He is either a nut or a fake, or He is what He claimed to be.

Well, when I came to that crossroad, I decided I would settle it for myself. The issue revolves around this fact of history. Jesus said, to some who wanted a sign, "I'll give you one." There's only one guaranteed sign on which faith can be built. God has at times gone beyond this guarantee, but the only sign that God guaranteed to vindicate His truth was the sign of Jonah, interpreted by Jesus to be the death and the resurrection of Christ.
At one point in the vast flow of history, a FACT emerges. God deigned to move into this tent of human flesh, fulfill the law that it might become incarnate, chose then to die in our place as the price of redemption, namely the fulfilled law that He might raise again and adopt us into a family with His new life without the burden of the law, that was but a school teacher to teach us our need of God's delivering power.

That He moved onto the stage of history is the claim of Christianity, and He vindicated Himself with a FACT that can be analyzed. Now it is a FACT there is no such thing as historic certainty. I learned that while doing my undergraduate major in history. "Historic Certainty" means every conceivable piece of evidence is there. That which you can conceive as possible evidence must be there to have historic certainty. The moment an event is past, and no more, you have lost the eyewitness ability to see it. Cameras help, but there is an element gone, so all historic certainty by definition is relative. All you can hope for is psychological certainty, where exposure to the relevant facts of history that are available produces a reaction psychologically, and that reaction is impossible not to have.

Any smart attorney knows that in a courtroom, there isn't an attorney that says something and the judge rebukes him, that the attorney knows before he said it that he shouldn't have said it; he wants the jury to hear it. And the judge bawls out the attorney, and he says, "Yes, your honor," and plays his little meek role. He knows exactly what he is doing. And then the judge pontifically looks over at the jury and says, "Discard that from your consideration." Okay, BANG! That's about the only way you can discard it; it's in there. And you see and hear and feel, and whatever else the evidence, you still have a reaction.
God vindicated His Son by the Resurrection.

Paul comes to Mars Hill; the philosophers are gathered there trying to consider all the gods, so worried they will miss one that they have a monument to the Unknown God. He seizes on that as a lever to talk about Christ. He says, "I'll tell you who the Unknown God is," and preaches Christ, whom he said God ordained by the resurrection. Paul said if there is no resurrection, our faith is vain, and we are found false witnesses of God, as we have testified of Him that He raised up the Christ.

The first message of the church was the one Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, "This Jesus whom ye know..." And he named the fact that they knew Him crucified; that they also knew. Then he testified of that which they didn't know, "This Jesus hath God raised up of whom we all are witnesses," and he introduced that vindicating fact. Paul says in one of his speeches, "He was seen and He was seen," and he catalogues the witnesses and comes to the cluster he says, "...to above five hundred brethren at once."

In those days, you could assemble eyewitnesses; not today. But like any other historic fact, from who wrote Shakespeare to Julius Caesar's existence, you can look for the FACT of history on which Christianity is based, namely: Jesus came out of the tomb.

And I will say, to set the frame, that if any person listening came in to the Cathedral making the claims Jesus made about themselves, I would offer the suggestion that they should submit to psychoanalysis and go to a hospital – unless I could see a twinkle in their eyes, that they were putting me on – because no mortal man can make these claims. But if with the claims that person said, "Slay me and in three days I'll come out of the tomb and sail off into the blue," and three days later that same person came out of the tomb and sailed off into the blue, I'd take another look at the one making the claims. I don't need anything else as a basis for my faith; I don't need all the fancy philosophic trinitarian doctrines. This resurrected one, if it happened, is my starting point for a personal and real God.

If I can find on the stage of history the One whose words I can spend my life researching, who was perfect, the center of all authority, the center of the religious universe, and all of these things, including having redeemed me, raised and prepared mansions in eternity, that's all the God I need. I start right there.

THE ISSUE IS: DID HE COME OUT OF THE TOMB?

You won't settle that by thinking about it; you research it. Now, to research anything you have to get a foundation in facts. Most people are fuzzy-minded; they argue a resurrection didn't occur because it can't occur, and anybody who says it did must be lying. Any other fact, you research it.

If you're going to ask, "Did Scott preach this message within an hour on this specific Sunday?" you've got to assume that I was here and that I preached at all. You've got to assume that the Cathedral exists. You've got to assume that that Sunday came and went. We don't have to discuss that; we take those facts for granted when determining if the message was less than an hour. Before we argue whether I preached an hour (or more), let's at least agree that I preached. You don't have to agree whether it was good or bad, but that I was here and my mouth moved and said things. That's known as the frame-of-reference – what's taken for granted.

And if someone says "Wow, I don't believe you were there!," then stop with debating clocks. It's much easier to prove I was here than to prove how long I preached, because you don't yet know when I started. Was it the preliminary remarks? Was it the first mark on the board? That's more debatable, but to prove whether I was here at all or not, that's a little easier.

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